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When you're an old-head who recognizes the old style it is easy to read the old style.
When you're a new-head who recognizes the new style it is easy to read the new style.
When you've never seen C# before, they're both gibberish.
When you've got experience with both, it can get a little confusing but you'll catch on without too much difficulty.
But its fucking wild to think the left side is more readable than the right side, simply because it is more verbose.
It's all pretty gibberish. It's just unabated OOP nonsense that doesn't serve any real purpose and is incredibly difficult to maintain (unrestricted global mutation is never a good idea).
I have no C# experience and both styles look fine to me. /shrug
I have loads of experience with C# and both styles look fine to me. /shrug
Same here. Also, this syntax is common in modem JavaScript, I don't get the hate.
this syntax is common in modem JavaScript
I think you might have just explained the hate 😅
Sure, but those are people who hate JavaScript for the sake of it. The rational ones hate it for its inconsistencies because the one thing JS gets right is its syntax.
yeah, in kotlin as well, except its '?:' instead of '??='
Eh, I haven't touched C# since 2001. I agree that the more verbose style is more explicit, and so more readable. That said, I can figure most of the new style out from context.
=> is clearly a closure declaration operator, similar to JavaScript.x ??= y is shorthand for "assign y to x if x is not set, and return x" which is kind of nice.There must also be some shorthand going on for getter properties being the same as methods w/o an arglist (or even a ()).
The only part that has me stumped is the unary question-mark operator: private static Singleton? _instance = null; I can think of a half-dozen things that could be, but I cannot decide what it's doing that the original question-mark-free version isn't.
The question mark makes it nullable
My favourite operator to go with the question mark is the exclamation mark. I remember it as the "I swear to God I'm not null!" operator.
As others said, it means nullable, but to put it in more intuitive, less-jargony way - it's a question mark bc you don't know if the value is actually there or not. It could be a Singleton, but it isn't until you check if there is a value. Whereas if you have, idk, int a no question mark, then you're saying you actually have data.
Essentially with C# 8, they "removed" null and reused the idea of null references in creating what is essentially an Option like in other languages. You either have some data of some type, or none (a null reference, in this case). By default, everything has to be there. Then when you need null, e.g. you may not have something initialized or an operation could fail, you explicitly grab for it. Thus it reduces null pointer bugs. If you don't need nullability, you can ensure that you don't accidentally write in an issue. It safety checks statements and parameters.
I agree that the more verbose style is more explicit, and so more readable.
On its face, its readable. But when you're dealing with 10,000 lines of code in a file, it becomes this ugly morass of extra nothingness to scroll through.
The only part that has me stumped is the unary question-mark operator: private static Singleton? _instance = null;
It transforms a strict variable into a nullable variable. I most commonly see it with primitive types.
So, for instance
int myInt = null
is an illegal assignment, but
int? myInt = null
works fine.
Why does a public class instantiation need this? Idfk. That might be extraneous. But I wouldn't throw away the whole code block rewrite over that one character.
The only thing that's not obvious to me is that ??= doesn't seem to invoke new Singleton() if it's already defined, essentially short-circuiting. Otherwise I would have to look up the semantics of it if I were worried about that constructor having side effects or doing something heavy.
I can figure most of the new style out from context.
=>is clearly a closure declaration operator, similar to JavaScript.x ??= yis shorthand for "assign y to x if x is not set, and return x" which is kind of nice.
Man, I've successfully stayed away from C# for a few years now, but that's wild to me that the x ??= y operator would be intuitive to you.
This could've easily been two or three operations, without being much more verbose, but actually being somewhat intuitively readable for most devs...
Well, I did have the older version on the left as a kind of rosetta stone for this. Plus, this kind of "init and/or return" pattern shows up a bunch of places, so it makes sense someone would want a quick version that's harder to screw up or has fewer side-effects.
I've also spent years investigating better ways to do things through various versions of C++, D, Rust, Go, and TypeScript. After a while, the big-picture patterns start to emerge and you see different camps start to converge on the same kinds of things. Stuff like these weird features start to feel like learning a new slang term for something you've felt, but could never say so succinctly.
In the case of ??= it's a more formalized Python x = x or y or x = x || y in JavaScript. The catch is that not all languages treat assignments like expressions that can be returned, so you get a clunky return as a separate statement; return (x = x or y) doesn't always fly. That friction is all over the place, and it's natural to want a shorthand for this very thing.
Sure enough, after searching a bit, ??= shows up in JS, PHP, and even Ruby has a version.
Edit: more context.
Nullable: Type? means Type or null
When you were forced to learn Java and want to run away seeing C#.
🤝
The problem with Gary is thinking that Singletons are ok to write in the first place.
I seen people use singletons in C++ for a single function. There was no justifying context either they just didn't think of putting the function in some namespace.
Gary should learn about Lazy and stop reinventing the wheel.
I put blame on any of his senior coworkers who didn't use this as a teaching opportunity during PR.
Or just services.AddSingleton<X>. There's plenty to criticize in C#, or any language, but this ain't it. Most of the new language features just make the code shorter without loosing clarity. Really liking newer C# versions.
Also, Lazy is thread safe. Gary's code is not.
I don't get it. I literally write code that looks like both of these all the time. Null coalescing is cool, and very handy sometimes. In this particular case, I'd probably write it more like the left, since it's more standard and my coworkers would be more familiar with it, but the right obviously does the same thing and I have no issues reading it.
You'll write whatever is in the guidelines at the place that pays your wage. But I'll take issue with people trying to be smart and trying to cram a complete function into one overly complicated line.
This is not thread safe.
Yes, it’s cut down for the meme.
In reality, it would probably look more like this:
public class Singleton
{
private static readonly Lazy<Singleton> lazy = new Lazy<Singleton>(() => new Singleton());
private Singleton(){}
public static Singleton Instance
{
get
{
return lazy.Value;
}
}
}
or this:
public class Singleton
{
private static readonly Singleton instance = new Singleton();
private Singleton(){}
public static Singleton Instance => instance;
}
Second is more readable.
Btw lazy; why can "second" be "zweite" or "Sekunde" depending on context??
Why can „Bank“ be a 🏦 or a 🛋️? It's a common feature of many languages that words can have multiple meanings. It's called Teekesselchen in German, which is funny because Teekesselchen is a Teekesselchen itself: It can either mean „small tea kettle“ or „word with more than one meaning“.
But more importantly, why is there no emoticon for bench? I had to use a couch instead.
But more importantly, why is there no emoticon for bench? I had to use a couch instead.
Yep. Unicode has lots of useless smileys but is missing some important ones. And some often used (like facepalm) are in hard-to-decipher realistic style instead of the usual round face.
And thanks for the explanation.
One day we might be able to create operators with three or maybe even four question marks. Imagine the possibilities!
few trick